


Resurrection

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drama, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-18
Updated: 2006-01-18
Packaged: 2019-01-19 11:45:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12409716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: You’ve grown up since they died. Grown up to be a brilliant student and excellent quidditch player. Grown up to face death in the face and lose every aspect of your personality until she made it her personal mission to save you.





	Resurrection

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

**_Disclaimer: Everything from HP books belongs to JK Rowling_ **

** Resurrection **

_Love can never be lost, only forgotten._

Years ago you were a different person. Years ago you attended a school that taught you magic where you played with three boys you called your best friends. You learned at that school. Learned different charms, different spells and potions, and fell fanatically in love with a game called quidditch. At this school you were popular, the life of the party, and for five years life was good. No, better. For five years life was **perfect**.

Years ago you were happy. Years ago you woke up in the morning smiling and walked those cold, stone hallways with an assurance you haven’t been able to completely regain. Years ago, you and your three friends played pranks. They weren’t mean pranks, just funny and bizarre, and really, you only did them for the short lived amusements the pranks gave you and your friends. You were popular then. You used to play quidditch with a passion, used to fill the stadium with students dying to witness your unique skills. You used to play jokes on your teachers and fellow students and used to make people laugh every minute of every day with your comical banter. You used to be surrounded by people attracting attention like a magnet since you never stopped talking and everything you said just seemed so… important, so captivating. Every word that came out of your mouth was coated with intelligence and passion and wit and it was impossible for any person to turn away the moment you opened your mouth and light sparked in your eyes.

Years ago you were arrogant. You still would be if it weren’t for them. You still would be the King of all Kings, still would walk the hallways giving yourself airs as you hexed Snivellus from around a corner. Back then, back when you were cocky, everything you touched turned golden. Back then you had perfect grades, perfect friends, perfect… everything. You aren’t sure you remember what that was like.

Years ago, when you were a child, you fell in love. She was shy and studious and for some reason disliked you more than anyone else in this world. She had red hair and green eyes and when you saw her in class or the common room your heart would speed up and your breath would get caught in your throat. Years ago you loved this girl who drank pumpkin juice with a straw and never slept a moment during her time at Hogwarts. Years ago you loved this girl who seemed fascinated by the mysteries of the magical world, even after three, four, five years of living there. Years ago, you loved this girl, then, suddenly, you forgot.

Your parents died when you were fifteen years old. You were home that night, sitting at your desk writing to Sirius and Remus when suddenly you heard screams from downstairs. You were watching that night. Watching from the stairs as death eaters tortured your father and raped your mother, throwing crucio after crucio until your parents could barely move. Torturing your parents until you could almost hear them in their minds begging for death because the pain in their bodies was so excruciating it forfeited their need to be alive. 

You hid that night. Ran with tears in your eyes after their screams began to torment your mind. Hid in a secret compartment under your bed like a coward until way into the next afternoon when you came downstairs and saw their lifeless bodies lying before you. You heard them screaming for hours, heard the torture continue and continue as you sat in the compartment and felt warm tears leaking down your face. You didn’t save them; that’s the only part of that night you even care to remember. You didn’t save them.

When you were fifteen you woke up early on a crisp Saturday afternoon to a house of ghosts. You took a warm shower and put on your best black dress robes before going with your grandparents to the cemetery. When you were fifteen you watched your parents’ lifeless bodies being lowered into the ground as you sat on a cushioned seat next to Sirius. When you were fifteen you listened to a priest talk about your parents’ lives and their contributions to society and decided that you helped kill your parents. Helped, because instead of trying to rescue them like the hero you once thought you were you hid underneath your bed crying for the mother being ravaged downstairs. Instead of saving them you hid away and some days you begrudged the fact that you were alive. 

You told that to Sirius a few days after the funeral. His eyes became clouded and teary. He showed a rage that you never saw before and screamed that if you didn’t hide like you did, you would be dead, too. He said that running away saved your bloody life and your parents wouldn’t have wanted you to die trying to save them. They wouldn’t have wanted you to give your life away so simply because there was nothing, nothing you could have done to help them. He said that you deserve to be alive. Some days, when you hold her in your arms and she whispers in your ear that she loves you, you believe it, too.

Some people say you died the day your parents were lowered into the ground. Some people say that James Potter became a shell, a shadow of a person he once was. Your once passionate nature became an echo fading away as time moved on. Fading away as their deaths pushed itself more and more into your past. Fading away as your friends helplessly watched you deteriorate. It was difficult for the people who loved you to see someone of such passion suddenly die away inside. It is still difficult because so much about you is still hidden within your pain. For so long they couldn't find you though they spent years looking for their old friend. They looked at you back then and saw nothing of what you once were, no passion, no arrogance and the more ghost-like you became the more your friends realized that you _were_ dead. The more they realized that nothing they did would save you. You were gone.

People stopped noticing you at school. They watch you play quidditch, nod to you in the hallways, but as far as the seventh year population of Hogwarts is concerned you’re a has-been. James Potter, the untouchable, showed his true colors during sixth year of Hogwarts, showed the humanity she always knew was inside of you. And she watched you all year slowly dying from the pain that wouldn’t stop eating away at your heart, your soul. She watched you trying to regain the outstanding aura that once surrounded you and realize that you were abandoned. She realized that you were left without any of the qualities that made you who you are.

She watched you fall in love with her. Watched your smirks turn to shy smiles and those shy smiles turn into confident grins. She watched that playful look in your eye turn into one of longing and watched the need to please her with your every move control you completely. And she watched, suddenly, as all signs of your love for her suddenly vanished. She watched as she became a thing of your past, yet another quality lost inside that grave holding your parents. And she hated it. She hated knowing she was wrong about you in the past and hated having to come to terms with realizing your worth after you lost everything she could never before see. She was miserable for you. She hated how you lost your essence and hated the look of eternal sadness in your eyes. She hated to witness you forgetting about her.

You’ve grown up in the passed two years, grown to a man. You’re no longer that carefree joker you were when you first arrived at Hogwarts and realize, for the first time, that there’s a world going on around you. You’ve grown up since they died. Grown into a brilliant student, who will become the most prominent auror in the wizarding world. Grown into an excellent quidditch player who led Gryffindor to victory after victory. You’ve grown from the boy who faced the brutal murder of his parents allowing yourself to believe that maybe somewhere out there goodness still reigns in the world. You’ve grown up to lose every aspect of your personality, lose everything that once made you James Potter, until she looked into your dead eyes and decided to make it her personal mission to save you. Until she decided that a life without you isn’t worth living at all.

You aren’t an easy person to save. Even with your golden qualities you were always more stubborn than a normal person and she worked day and night to try and make you remember everything you forgot, everything you once were. She courted you as you once persistently courted her but you wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t speak to her, and every time she tried to get close to you, you would push her away with those icy glares you’ve become an expert at giving.

You hardly spoke to her until Christmas as you fought with Sirius about going home with him and Peter for the holidays. Hardly thought about her until that day when you realized you were staying at Hogwarts because beautiful Lily Evans signed her name to the list and somehow you felt compelled to be around her. She emitted that happiness, that innocence that was once in your heart and it drew you to her. She was everything you wished you still could be and somewhere inside of you you were naÃ¯ve enough to wish that some of her optimism could rub off on you. You let her in that break, finally listened to the words she had to say, finally smiled for the first time with no obligation, no pain hidden beneath your eyes. You were happy for the first time in years.

When you were with her it was as if the past few years didn’t happen. As if your parents never died. She made you forget all the pain of the past years. She made you forget that you became a tortured soul when you were fifteen. More importantly, she made you remember. She resurrected your charming smile and witty remarks Hogwarts lived without for almost two years. She resurrected that passionate glint always in your eyes and brought about the first prank since your parents' death. She made you James Potter again. So on Valentines Day when she, in a very cliché way, told you that she loved you, the only thing you could reply was that you loved her too because with her you found a piece of yourself you thought you had lost forever.

It’s something you could never repay her for. She gave you your life back, your very being. Lily Evans took a nearly dead James Potter and brought him back to life through a love she fancied never existed, a love you once thought you had lost. And you fell in love with her all over again, felt golden as you sat with her by the fire with her head resting on your shoulder. Suddenly, you weren't lost in a sea of pain. Suddenly, you felt alive.

**_End_ **

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